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Server sales up 18% year over year

Overall, business is booming for computer server manufacturers. Not only are companies still buying servers for use on premises, cloud providers are buying hardware to quench the world's thirst for computing power as well. Overall server sales in the fourth quarter of 2018 (Oct-Dec) were up by 18% compared to the same time period in 2017.

According to Information Age, here's how the companies sliced up the pie when it comes to sales:

“According to Gartner, Dell EMC ended 2018 with a 20.2% market share, securing the top spot in the worldwide server market. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) followed in second place with 17.7% of the market. Huawei experienced the strongest growth in the quarter, growing 45.9%. In server shipments, Dell EMC maintained the top position in the fourth quarter of 2018 with a 16.7% market share. HPE secured the second spot with 12.2% of the market ... Inspur Electronics experienced the strongest growth with a 24.6% increase in shipments in the fourth quarter of 2018."

In other words, while U.S.-based manufacturers earned top spots in the server market, Chinese manufacturers with a strong presence in Asia are catching up. For more info on how organizations are using servers on-premises and how IT pros feel about various manufacturers, check out the Spiceworks State of Servers report.

Millions of cyber attacks target London landmark websites

Hackers something against popular tourist attractions in London. So much so that combined, several British institutions were attacked over 100 million times in 2018. And apparently, cybercriminals have a big beef with plants.

According to Tech Radar:

“Kew Gardens (made) up the majority having been hit 86 million times just last year - a year-on-year increase of 438 per cent ... The Imperial War Museum revealed it was attacked ten million times, the Natural History Museum reported 875,414 incidents and Tate Modern and Tate Britain reported 494,709 attacks together ... 82 million of the total attacks used some form of spyware, making it the most popular attack technique, with information leak attempts found in 1.6 million cases."

The figures are eye popping to say the least. Considering that there are only 31M seconds in a year, that means that on average 3 cyber attacks are launched against these institutions every second. At least I think that's right. The numbers seem very high, so perhaps there is an imperial to metric conversion somewhere in there that I'm not accounting for.

But there's more going on in the world than that.

Man's smartphone saves his life by serving as a shield

We know that smartphones can save lives by calling 911. But apparently, they're pretty good at stopping deadly projectiles as well. And one man is still alive today because his phone took a bullet — actually an arrow — for him.

According to Gizmodo:

"According to the NSW Police Force, the victim pulled into his driveway on the morning of March 13, 2019, only to notice a man standing outside his property armed with a bow and arrow when he got out of his car. That’s not something you see every day, even in Australia, so police say he pulled out his phone to snap a photo of the archer when the armed man raised his bow and fired.

"Instead of hitting the victim, the arrow pierced the back of the raised smartphone, leaving a sharp tip protruding a couple of inches through the device’s display on the other side."

Anyone who's ever had to deal with a broken smartphone knows it's a pain in the butt. But if this guy's phone had moved just a few inches in any direction, the pain experienced would have been exponentially worse.

And you can't not know this.

First AI generated fake people, now it creates fake landscape photos

Not content to generate very believable images of human faces, now AI can create convincing images of beautiful scenes from nature that look like they belong in National Geographic magazine. And if you're able to draw a squiggle in an app like Microsoft Paint, you too can create images like a pro photographer, without trekking to remote locations and lugging heavy camera gear.

According to TechCrunch:

"At Nvidia GTC 2019, the company unveiled a stunning image creator. Using generative adversarial networks, users of the software are with just a few clicks able to sketch images that are nearly photorealistic. The software will instantly turn a couple of lines into a gorgeous mountaintop sunset. This is MS Paint for the AI age. Called GauGAN, the software is just a demonstration of what’s possible with Nvidia’s neural network platforms. It’s designed to compile an image how a human would paint, with the goal being to take a sketch and turn it into a photorealistic photo in seconds. In an early demo, it seems to work as advertised."

To see just how convincing many of these images are, check out this video of the new AI-powered software in action. Currently it's just a demo, but when the tool is released into the wild, you can bet you'll start seeing many of these images appear in a desktop wallpaper, advertisement, or article near you.

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That picture of the phone is no joke, the man was extraordinarily lucky not to take an arrow to his skull. Also makes me glad I didn't take up a plainclothes security job near me for a mining company who had workers receiving threats of harm via crossbow delivery...

This person is a verified professional.

While I do appreciate the bow and arrow iphone saved my life one I can't help but laugh at this one.

Millions of cyber attacks target London landmark websites

Hackers something against popular tourist attractions in London. So
much so that combined, several British institutions were attacked over
100 million times in 2018. And apparently, cybercriminals have a big
beef with plants.

According to Tech Radar:

“Kew Gardens
(made) up the majority having been hit 86 million times just last year -
a year-on-year increase of 438 per cent ... The Imperial War Museum
revealed it was attacked ten million times, the Natural History Museum
reported 875,414 incidents and Tate Modern and Tate Britain reported
494,709 attacks together ... 82 million of the total attacks used some
form of spyware, making it the most popular attack technique, with
information leak attempts found in 1.6 million cases."

Ahhh imperial war museum... the attacks never stop do they? This must mean war.

This person is a verified professional.

Millions of cyber attacks target London landmark websites ... a year-on-year increase of 438 per cent

Is it really a 438% increase in attacks or a 438% in what they noticed? I mean, maybe last year their security wasn't so good and they just didn't know about all the attacks. Or, maybe the criteria for counting changed. Maybe last year someone mistyping a url was just a 404 error, but this year it counts as an "attack" because the typo could have been an intentional attempt to find a weakness in a URL parameter.

This person is a verified professional.

Im seriously curious about them attacks.. 86m, @ Kew Gardens... i mean how many staff work there, alli can think is that someone is pranking them by signing up to either free pron or dating sites :D because where else can you get that much spam!

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I like this Snap!. Next market dip I plan to venture into the server manufacturing space with some investments.

Not sure how to feel about the AI painting.. scary to think that we could be easily fooled by "Virtual Windows" someday in a dystopian society using similar software! (No, the planet's not entirely uninhabitable outside, everything's fine, just keep consuming....)

This person is a verified professional.

Millions of cyber attacks target London landmark websites ... a year-on-year increase of 438 per cent

Is it really a 438% increase in attacks or a 438% in what they noticed? I mean, maybe last year their security wasn't so good and they just didn't know about all the attacks. Or, maybe the criteria for counting changed. Maybe last year someone mistyping a url was just a 404 error, but this year it counts as an "attack" because the typo could have been an intentional attempt to find a weakness in a URL parameter.

This person is a verified professional.

I have never heard of any of these London landmarks. However, given my druthers, I would totally attack the Taint Museum.

Honestly have you never heard of these? Cant tell if touch of sarcasm or truth, I know Southern Alaska is a fairly slow-paced country, but to not know of the at very least Natural History Museum (the largest collection of anything natural) , Tait i could understand, but even Kew Gardens, Which is th largest botanical gardens in world and houses the most Flora/Forna of any man-made place :D

We know that smartphones can save lives by calling 911. But apparently, they're pretty good at stopping deadly projectiles as well. And one man is still alive today because his phone took a bullet — actually an arrow — for him.

According to Gizmodo:

"According to the NSW Police Force, the victim pulled into his driveway on the morning of March 13, 2019, only to notice a man standing outside his property armed with a bow and arrow when he got out of his car. That’s not something you see every day, even in Australia, so police say he pulled out his phone to snap a photo of the archer when the armed man raised his bow and fired.

"Instead of hitting the victim, the arrow pierced the back of the raised smartphone, leaving a sharp tip protruding a couple of inches through the device’s display on the other side."

Anyone who's ever had to deal with a broken smartphone knows it's a pain in the butt. But if this guy's phone had moved just a few inches in any direction, the pain experienced would have been exponentially worse.